Staging Act 5 of Schiller's Wilhelm Tell

Abstract

Of the nine plays completed by Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm Tell (1804) is probably the most well known to general theater audiences and students of theater history. annual outdoor presentations of the play in Interlaken, Switzerland, attract wide audiences with the delightful Alpine setting of the theater, the opportunity to see a medieval costume drama, and, as the Interlaken production is performed by local amateurs, the chance to see the Swiss performing in a play that deals with their country's origins. In America the annual outdoor productions in New Glarus, Wisconsin, likewise emphasize medieval spectacle and Swiss heritage. (1) Wilhelm Tell provides the opportunity for good summer stock theater. Yet Schiller engaged in more than just writing an entertaining costume drama. As a playwright Schiller was deeply concerned with philosophical and political problems, as well as with history, aesthetics, and poetics. Indeed, Schiller stands among the most contemplative poets to write for the stage in the past two hundred years. In his plays one notices recurring questions about abuses of political power and the possibility and necessity for individual action in the face of tyranny and oppression. Schiller's lifelong quest to reach toward a better world in his writings is part of his legacy to modern civilization. In Wilhelm Tell Schiller localizes a particular manifestation of the quest for liberty in the Swiss fight against the Austrians, a quest that the character Tell brings to a climax with his assassination of the tyrannical Austrian governor Gessler. Characters in the play and audiences at the theater hail Gessler's death; there is not much to like about him, and with Gessler dead the way is clear for a happy ending. However, Schiller's text includes reference to another political assassination in act 5, the murder of the Hapsburg emperor Albrecht I by his own kinsman, Duke Johann of Swabia. In Schiller's text Tell encounters the duke, thereafter referred to as Johannes Parricida, in the play's penultimate scene. This juxtaposition of Tell and Duke Johann complicates the otherwise festive ending of the play. Might this be why the scenes with Duke Johann are sometimes excised from productions? In the contemporary political landscape where the boundary between freedom fighter and terrorist is often obscure, the time seems right to emphasize the importance of the entirety of act 5 of Wilhelm Tell in light not only of Schiller's dramaturgy, but of his aesthetics and ethics as well. Beginning around 1791, Schiller, intrigued with philosophy since his student days, became very interested in studying Kant, especially the Kritik der Urteilskraft (Critique of Judgment). This interest in aesthetics continued throughout the first half of the decade and culminated in the publication of the Uber die Asthetische Erziehung des Menschen in eine Reihe von Briefen (On the Aesthetic Education of Man in a Series of Letters [1796]). (2) While Schiller's interest in aesthetics frequently receives attention, the connection between his aesthetics, his ethics, and his plays does not always receive the emphasis it deserves. moral purpose that Schiller envisioned for dramatic literature and theatrical presentation needs emphasis both when reading the plays and when staging them. Beginning with his early writings, such as the address given at the Mannheim Theater in 1784, Die Schaubuhne als eine moralische Anstalt betrachten (The Stage Considered as a Moral Institution), (3) Schiller outlined a program for German drama and theater which he subsequently put into practice in his plays and in his collaborations with Goethe in the Weimar Theater. (One may observe that Schiller's theory and practice of the theatrical arts with its strong ethical component prefigures Brecht's Lehrstucke without being as didactically heavy-handed.) In The Stage Considered as a Moral Institution, Schiller considers especially the educative function of theater. …